Evaluative Spillovers from Technological Change: The Effects of “DNA Envy” on Occupational Practices in Forensic Science
基于对犯罪实验室18个月的民族志研究，探讨DNA分析成为法医证据“黄金标准”后，其他法医职业群体（如枪支检验员、毒理学家）因与DNA比较而面临工作实践和价值观的挑战，并做出不同回应。
Most studies of technologies’ impact on occupational change focus on occupational groups’ adoption and use of particular technologies in a field or workplace. Drawing on an 18-month ethnographic study of a crime laboratory, I focus instead on “evaluative spillovers”: the comparisons that occupations encounter when technologies change the work of neighboring occupations in their field. I explore what happened when DNA profiling was held up as the “gold standard” of forensic evidence, resulting in scientific, public, and legal scrutiny of other forensic science occupational groups. Comparisons with DNA profiling challenged the working techniques and the values of firearms examiners, toxicologists, and narcotics analysts, but each group responded differently, either embracing or resisting changes to their work practices. Their responses were predicated on the institutional pathways that evaluative spillovers traveled through the field in locales such as professional association meetings and court proceedings. These three aspects of the occupational system—technique, values, and institutional pathways—influenced how workers negotiated the impact of technological change in the field of forensic science.